7. The New Year

The standard personal allowance increases from £8105 to £9440.

The code for emergency use with effect from 6th April 2013 changes accordingly to 944L

There is a general uplift of L suffix tax codes by 134. The increment is applied automatically to all existing employees by the 'Year End Processing' routine.

Where you receive a code notification for an individual employee to be operated from 6th April 2013 (on Form P9(T) or via your online HMRC account), the specified code must be entered after the year end has been run.

Refer to form P9X(2013) for further details.

As part of the requirement to report PAYE in real time (RTI), HMRC require an Employer Alignment Submission (EAS) to be made before your first Full Payment Submission (FPS) if:

• you have a large PAYE scheme with over 250 employees
• you operate more than one payroll system or frequency - for example monthly and weekly payrolls held either in separate payroll data sets (i.e. PO1 and PO2) or multiple payroll frequencies run in the same payroll data set.

If you meet the requirements to submit an EAS, you will need to run the Supervisor function 'Create RTI Employer Alignment File' to create an EAS part for each frequency and/or payroll data set. This needs to be done after ensuring that all employee data is correct including tax codes for 2013/14.

You will need to enter the total number of EAS files to be created and submitted. For example enter 3 if you have weekly and monthly paid employees in one payroll system and another set of monthly paid employees on another payroll system. Note: If any part of your payroll is handled by another party, i.e. directors salaries are processed by your accountants, you need to ensure the number of parts includes any submissions that would be made by the other party. This information will be used by HMRC to determine when they have received the details for all of your employees for the current year.

Once created, the file(s) need to be submitted to HMRC using 'GovTalk - File By Internet' from the axis diplomat Payroll Run menu.  Please note the earliest that the EAS files can be uploaded is 0600h on 6th April 2013.

Calculate Net Pay will check the tax year / pay date and automatically apply the following earnings thresholds effective from 6th April 2013:

The Employee and Employer NI contribution rates are unchanged.

Note: The 'Print Payroll Parameters' function, accessed from the 'Supervisor Functions' menu, may be used to produce a report of the rates applicable to each NI category and band of earnings.

Refer to Employer Help Book E12 for further details.

The weekly rate increases from £85.85 to £86.70. 

The appropriate daily rate is determined by the number of qualifying days.

Eg. The daily rate for an employee with five qualifying days increases from £17.17 to £17.34. 

Unless you qualify under the Percentage Threshold Scheme you are not entitled to recover any of the SSP you pay to your employees.

For details of the scheme refer to Employer Help Book E14 and the F1 HELP for the ‘Calculate Monthly Remittance’ function.

The standard weekly rate increases from £135.45 to £136.78

The amount of SMP / OSPP / ASPP/ SAP that may be recovered is unchanged for employers who do not qualify for Small Employers Relief (SER) who can recover 92% of the SMP / SPP / SAP paid to their employees.

Employers who do qualify for Small Employers Relief (SER) can recover 100% of the SMP / SPP / SAP paid to their employees plus NIC compensation of 3%.

A ‘small employer’ is one who paid (or was liable to pay) total gross class 1 NICs of £45,000 or less in the individuals qualifying tax year.

Refer to Employer Help Book E15, Employer Help Book E19 and Employer Help Book E16 for further details. 

The annual threshold for the collection of Student Loans increases from £15,795 to £16,365.

The deduction percentage rate remains unchanged at 9% of earnings above the threshold.

Refer to Employer Help Book E17 for further details.

Calculate Net Pay will automatically apply the appropriate annual tax bands for the tax year / pay date as follows:

The new bands for 2013-14 are effective from the first pay day on or after 6th April 2013.

The Additional Rate reduces from 50% to 45%.

NB. A report of all the current statutory deduction and payment rates can be produced using the ‘Print Payroll Parameters’ function which is located on the Supervisor Functions menu.

Refer to Employer Help Book E12 for further details.